In­tel­li­gence agen­cies are dis­clos­ing new in­form­a­tion about searches per­formed on Amer­ic­ans’ di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tions through a con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram in­ten­ded for sur­veil­lance of for­eign crim­in­al and ter­ror­ist sus­pects.

The Of­fice of the Dir­ect­or of Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence re­leased a re­port Monday de­tail­ing a meth­od of for­eign sur­veil­lance that crit­ics have claimed amounts to an un­law­ful “back­door search” of U.S. cit­izens. The gov­ern­ment claims that such data col­lec­tion is law­ful un­der Sec­tion 702 of the For­eign In­tel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act, which is de­signed to tar­get non-Amer­ic­ans reas­on­ably be­lieved to be liv­ing out­side the U.S.

But some­times the Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency and oth­er in­tel­li­gence agen­cies col­lect Amer­ic­an con­tent in their vast sweeps of for­eign emails and oth­er In­ter­net data, and spe­cific­ally tar­get that in­form­a­tion.

The re­port re­veals the num­ber of “quer­ies” or searches of the con­tents of U.S. com­mu­nic­a­tions last year con­duc­ted by the NSA and the CIA. The FBI is also lis­ted but said it does not track the amount of quer­ies it car­ries out.

Last week, the gov­ern­ment re­leased a sep­ar­ate re­port re­veal­ing that U.S. spy agen­cies have spied on the In­ter­net com­mu­nic­a­tions of tens of thou­sands of In­ter­net users around the world. But Monday’s re­port, re­leased in re­sponse to a re­quest from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., provides the clearest pic­ture yet of the num­ber of Amer­ic­ans af­fected by the 702 pro­gram.

In 2013, the NSA con­duc­ted 198 searches of the con­tents of U.S. com­mu­nic­a­tions data un­der the 702 pro­gram. By com­par­is­on, it al­lowed about 9,500 searches of metadata — the dur­a­tion and num­bers of a call but not its con­tents — ac­quired via 702 in 2013.

The CIA con­duc­ted “few­er than 1,900” searches of U.S. com­mu­nic­a­tions through 702 in 2013. The FBI, mean­while, said it does not main­tain such in­form­a­tion.

“When the FBI says it con­ducts a sub­stan­tial num­ber of searches and it has no idea of what the num­ber is, it shows how flawed this sys­tem is and the con­sequences of in­ad­equate over­sight,” Wyden said in a state­ment. “This huge gap in over­sight is a prob­lem now, and will only grow as glob­al com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tems be­come more in­ter­con­nec­ted.”

“This is just the very type of back­door search­ing that nearly three out of four rep­res­ent­at­ives voted to stop just a few weeks ago,” said Kev­in Bank­ston, policy dir­ect­or of the New Amer­ica Found­a­tion’s Open Tech­no­logy In­sti­tute. “At this point, it’s clear that the U.S. gov­ern­ment is do­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of sur­veil­lance re­lated to U.S. per­sons us­ing this Sec­tion 702 au­thor­ity that’s sup­posed to be dir­ec­ted out­side of the coun­try.”

Earli­er this month, the House voted 293-123 to ap­prove an amend­ment to a de­fense ap­pro­pri­ations bill that would pre­vent the NSA from us­ing fund­ing to sup­port two of its “back­door” spy­ing pro­grams. It would ad­di­tion­ally re­quire the NSA get a war­rant be­fore read­ing any private on­line com­mu­nic­a­tions sent by Amer­ic­ans.

Both the Sen­ate In­tel­li­gence and Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tees are cur­rently weigh­ing NSA re­form.

On Wed­nes­day, the Pri­vacy Civil Liber­ties Over­sight Board will re­lease re­com­mend­a­tions on how the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion should re­form the 702 pro­gram in wake of rev­el­a­tions from Ed­ward Snowden that began last June.

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